A decades-old dispute over the mostly Muslim Himalayan region of Kashmir, claimed in full but ruled in part by both Pakistan and India, has heated up in recent years after a 2003 ceasefire brought more than a decade of relative peace.

“Troops were busy in line communication maintenance when they were fired upon and hit by heavy mortar round,” the Pakistani military said of the attack in which the four men were killed, in the Jandrot region.

Pakistani forces responded, killing three Indian soldiers and wounding several, it said.

India’s military told Reuters that Pakistani forces fired first and no casualties were recorded on the Indian side.

On another section of the so-called Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir between the two sides, India said its forces on Monday killed five member of a pro-Pakistan militant group trying to slip into Indian Kashmir.

“They crossed the Jhelum river which is de facto border in the area. We allowed them to cross the river and challenged them. All of the five who crossed the river were killed,” said an Indian officer, Major General Gulab Singh Rawat.

A Pakistani military spokesman was not immediately available for comment on the second incident.

India accuses Pakistan of backing Islamist militants and encouraging them to attack soldiers in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where a separatist insurgency has simmered for years, and in other parts of India.

Pakistan denies that and says India must hold negotiations on the future of Kashmir.

The neighbors have fought three wars since their independence from Britain, two of them over Kashmir.

CALLING NUCLEAR BLUFF

Artillery exchanges across the LoC were common for years before the 2003 ceasefire in Kashmir largely brought an end to violence but clashes have again been increasing over the past couple of years.

Relations have been particularly tense since India said it had carried out cross-border surgical strikes against militants hiding in Pakistan in 2016.

Pakistan said Indian forces never crossed onto its territory.

On Friday, Indian army chief General Bipin Rawat said his forces were willing to carry out operations inside Pakistan despite the risk of a nuclear conflict, the Indian daily the Hindustan Times reported.

“If we will have to really confront the Pakistanis, and a task is given to us, we are not going to say we cannot cross the border because they have nuclear weapons. We will have to call their nuclear bluff,” Rawat said at a press briefing.

The comment drew derision from Pakistan’s foreign minister who termed the statement “irresponsible” and an “invitation for nuclear encounter”.

“If that is what they desire, they are welcome to test our resolve. The general’s doubt would swiftly be removed,” Khwaja Asif said on Twitter.

Pakistan’s military has said 52 civilians were killed and 254 wounded by Indian shelling in the region last year, more than in all of the previous 14 years combined.

The two sides accuse each other of repeated violations of the 2003 ceasefire.

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Source: Reuters

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The state department said the freeze would remain in place until Islamabad took action against the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban.

Earlier this week, President Trump accused Pakistan of lying and deceiving the US while receiving billions in aid.

The Pakistan government has forcefully pushed back against the US, a key ally.

After the earlier comments by Mr Trump it called attacks on it by US officials “incomprehensible” and said they “negated the decades of sacrifices made by the Pakistani nation”.

The US stance has been praised by India and Afghanistan, but China, which is investing tens of billions in Pakistan, has defended Islamabad.

The Trump administration had already delayed handing over $255m (£188m) in military aid to Pakistan.

In announcing the restrictions, state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said she could not yet put a dollar value on how much aid was being cut.

She said the US government considered that the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network were “destabilising the region and also targeting US personnel”.

On Thursday, the state department also placed Pakistan on a special watch list for “severe violations of religious freedom”.

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Source: BBC

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In his first tweet of the year, he also alleged Pakistan harboured terrorists.

Pakistan reacted angrily to the tweet, saying all the funding was accounted for and that Mr Trump was bitter due to the “US defeat in Afghanistan”.

The US is considering withholding more than $250m (£185m) in aid that it delayed sending to Islamabad in August.

The move is being considered due to Pakistan’s perceived failure to crack down more effectively on terror groups, The New York Times reports.

“The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools,” Mr Trump wrote.

He added: “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif told Pakistan’s Geo TV: “We have already told the US that we will not do more, so Trump’s ‘no more’ does not hold any importance,

“Pakistan is ready to publicly provide every detail of the US aid that it has received.”‏

US Ambassador to Pakistan David Hale was summoned to the foreign officeon Monday to hear a protest over Mr Trump’s tweet.

Defence Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan tweeted that the US had given Pakistan “nothing but invective & mistrust”.

Mr Trump has criticised Pakistan for offering a “safe haven” to terrorists in the past.

In a speech in August, he said: “We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting.”

“It is time for Pakistan to demonstrate its commitment to civilisation, order, and to peace”, he added.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has also put pressure on Pakistan over its perceived backing for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The US is a key ally to the country, which enjoys a special status as a non-Nato alliance partner.

But Mr Tillerson has said aid funding “could be on the table for discussion if in fact they are unwilling to change their posture or change their approach to how they are dealing with the numerous terrorist organisations that find safe haven in Pakistan”.

Pakistan has already had millions of dollars of US aid withheld for allegedly not taking enough action against the Taliban-allied Haqqani network.

The New York Times said US officials had been denied access to a member of the organisation who they believed could help with information on an American hostage.

The Afghan Ambassador to the US Hamdullah Mohib and former Afghan President Hamid Karzai both welcomed Mr Trump’s latest tweet.

Mr Karzai said the tweet “on Pakistan’s duplicitous position over the past 15 years is vindication that the war on terror is not in bombing Afghan villages and homes but in the sanctuaries beyond Afghanistan”.

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Source: BBC

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At least three men disguised in burkas arrived in a rickshaw and entered the Peshawar Agriculture Training Institute on Friday morning.

All of the attackers were also killed, the army said. The Pakistani Taliban said they had carried out the attack.

The college was thought to have been closed for the Eid-e-Milad holiday.

At least one blast was heard from inside the campus, according to media reports citing the military.

Police and army commandos cordoned off the site.

Eight students and an office worker were killed, police said.

One wounded student, Ahteshan ul-Haq, told Reuters that about 120 out of nearly 400 college residents were present during the attack, as most had gone home for a long holiday weekend.

“We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. I got up and within seconds everybody was running and shouting ‘the Taliban have attacked’,” he said.

Peshawar, close to the Afghan border, has seen some of the worst violence during the Taliban insurgency in recent years.

In 2014 Taliban militants attacked an army-run school in Peshawar, leaving 141 people dead in one of the worst assaults in the country’s recent history.

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Source: BBC

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The ruling came after a probe into his family’s wealth following the 2015 Panama Papers dump linking Mr Sharif’s children to offshore companies.

Mr Sharif has consistently denied any wrongdoing in the case.

The five judges reached a unanimous verdict in the Islamabad court, which was filled to capacity.

“Following the verdict, Nawaz Sharif has resigned from his responsibilities as prime minister,” a spokesman for Mr Sharif’s office said in a statement.

There was heightened security in the capital, with tens of thousands of troops and police deployed.

One of the judges, Ejaz Afzal Khan, said that Mr Sharif was no longer “eligible to be an honest member of the Parliament”.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan earlier advised Mr Sharif to accept Friday’s verdict.

The court has recommended anti-corruption cases against several individuals, including Mr Sharif, his daughter Maryam and her husband Safdar, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and others.

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Source: BBC

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Facebook has agreed to send a team to Pakistan to address reservations about content on the social media site, according to the interior ministry.

Blasphemy is a highly sensitive and incendiary issue in Pakistan.

Critics say blasphemy laws, which allow the death penalty in some cases, are often misused to oppress minorities.

Earlier this week Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif voiced his support for a wide-ranging crackdown on blasphemous content on social media.

In a statement on his party’s official Twitter account, he described blasphemy as an “unpardonable offence”.

‘Should share information’

Then on Thursday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar reasserted Pakistan’s determination to tackle the issue, saying he would take “any steps necessary” to make sure Pakistan’s message gets across.

He said he had asked officials to liaise with the FBI in the US and with social media platforms on a daily basis.

“Facebook and other service providers should share all information about the people behind this blasphemous content with us,” he is quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper.

In a statement quoted by the AP news agency, Facebook said it viewed government requests with care keeping in mind “the goal of protecting the privacy and rights of our users.

“We disclose information about accounts solely in accordance with our terms of service and applicable law. A Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty or other formal request may be required for international requests, and we include these in our Government Requests Report.”

Facebook has not confirmed whether it will be sending a delegation to Pakistan to address the concerns of the government.

Pakistan has often blocked access to pornographic sites and sites with anti-Islamic content and in 2010 a Pakistani court blocked Facebook after over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

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Source: BBC

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The order prohibits the display of adverts on electronic and print media that reference Valentine’s Day, bans the sale of associated merchandise and states that the day cannot be celebrated in “any public space or government building.”

The court has requested Pakistan’s Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) to monitor these platforms and share any information that shows that the ban has been compromised.

The court’s order came after a petition was submitted by a citizen called Abdul Waheed — who claimed that ongoing promotions of Valentine’s Day were “against the teachings of Islam and should be banned immediately.”In Pakistan, Valentine’s Day is seen by some as amoral and an appropriation of Western culture.

Resistance against it is not completely unusual. Religious groups like the Islamic political party jamat e Islami have often protested against marking Valentine’s Day in the country and hold rallies annually against the celebration on February 14.

In 2016, the local government in the city of Peshawar in the country’s northern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhua also banned celebrations.

The country’s president Mamnoon Hussain, made a statement in February 2016, asking Pakistan’s not to celebrate the day since it was “not a part of Muslim tradition, but of the West.”

The Islamabad High Court’s decision has also divided social media users, with some tweeting for the ban and others vehemently against it.

A chance to promote business

Though Valentine’s day tends not to be celebrated widely across the country, in recent years, various companies have used the event to promote their products.

In the first week of February, vendors start selling heart-shaped balloons and the price of red roses increases.

In Islamabad’s markets Monday, florists standing amid large heart-shaped garlands of roses and bouquets of daffodils and jasmine were worried by the effects of the ban.

“We spend four to five days making these, I’ve got forty of them ready to be sold for tomorrow,” Sultan Zaib, told CNN.

Mohammad Naveed, who runs a roadside flower shop, told CNN that he had invested close to the equivalent of $2000 on buying blooms for Valentine’s Day.

Florists source flowers from abroad and from the nearby fields of Punjab. Usually they earn about $80 for a day’s sales, but the amount increases tenfold on Valentine‘s day.

“If they ban us from selling these tomorrow then it will be a disaster, we simply cannot afford this,” said Naveed.

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Source: CNN

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The decision to ban the films came amid a rise in military tensions over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

The boycott was imposed after some Indian film-makers had banned Pakistani actors from working in Bollywood films.

Bollywood is popular in Pakistan, and the self-imposed ban is reported to have led to a dramatic loss of revenue.

The move followed a surge in violence in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Film distributors and cinema owners in Pakistan said they would resume screening the films on Monday.

Pakistan first imposed a ban on Indian films following the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965. The ban was eventually lifted in 2008.

Disputed Muslim-majority Kashmir has been a flashpoint for decades and has sparked two wars between India and Pakistan, which both control parts of the territory.

Today it remains one of the most militarised zones in the world.

In September, an attack on an army base in Uri in Indian-administered Kashmir claimed the lives of 18 soldiers. It was the deadliest of its kind for years.

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Source: BBC

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